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Shame and Self-respect (Episode 91)
863 Plays1 year ago
“And what are we by nature? We are free, honorable, and self-respecting. After all, does any other animal blush or feel shame?”
The fear of social disgrace, shame, can prevent us from living well. Yet, the Stoics argued that there’s a related emotion, a kind of self-respect, that can help us live more freely. In this conversation, Caleb and Michael discuss both.
(00:06) Introduction
(04:48) Shame as a Passion
(15:47) Positive Shame?
(17:19) The Role of Our Self-Image
(25:40) Everyone's Guardian Spirit
(32:07) The Hidden Philosopher
(34:28) Halftime Summary
(37:55) Challenges
(40:20) Shame for the Past
(45:04) Self-respect
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Transcript
Introduction to Shame and Stoicism
00:00:00
Speaker
So shame is about your character, not just about the results, not about the external circumstances. It's not about making a mistake. It's about your character. But, um, that defeatist part of shame, which is that, well, this is who I essentially am. This is who I necessarily am. The Stoics don't endorse. They allow that freedom for self-transformation.
Should Stoics Feel Shame?
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to Stoic Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros. And I'm Michael Trombley.
00:00:28
Speaker
And today we are going to be talking about shame, the emotion how Stoics should think about it. Because it's really one of those central human emotions, generally experienced as a negative emotion. But there's, you know, this question, should Stoics feel shame at all?
00:00:49
Speaker
If so, what's the best way to experience it? Or should we think of it purely as a negative emotion that is best reduced, if not completely eliminated? So that's what we're talking about today.
The Dual Nature of Shame
00:01:04
Speaker
And shame's one of those, I think everybody's well acquainted with it. It's one of those things that at its worst, I mean, taking a non-stoke perspective for a second, at its worst, it's one of the worst things you can feel. It's life destroying in one sense, but then in the other, maybe there's times you should feel ashamed. You know, maybe times when you've done something wrong, it's tightly linked to regret in that sense in a way that can be, I would think somebody who did something terrible and didn't feel ashamed was actually lacking in some sort of way.
00:01:34
Speaker
So there's both the good and the bad side of shame and excited to dig into it in a stoic perspective a little bit more. Yeah, everyone has experienced shame and it has those that dual aspect of each of us can recall some silly moment where we said something silly, rather minor, but then felt completely ashamed of whatever occurred. And then on reflection, it seems like that.
Shame vs. Cringe
00:01:59
Speaker
reaction was was not appropriate and then still on or perhaps in other cases even knowing others who are ashamed of doing things that we think they ought not ought not be ashamed of and then on the other side we also have just just as you said there are certain mistakes we've made we've seen others make
00:02:18
Speaker
where a shame almost feels like an appropriate thing to feel. It does feel like an appropriate emotion to feel. And the question is, how should you think about that now, given these stoic ideas?
00:02:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's right. When you were talking about, I was thinking of the nuance now between shame and, you know, kind of contemporary slang of like cringe. You know, like if you're cringing at yourself or you're cringing at somebody else and most feel like maybe cringe is, is kind of a short term passing experience. It's kind of an embarrassment really. And shame is, I guess, a
Shame as a Tool for Self-Improvement
00:02:54
Speaker
bit more than that. I'm sure you're going to get into it in detail in a second though, so I won't.
00:02:58
Speaker
I'll wait till then before I spoil what I think of it. All right, excellent. So in this conversation, we're going to be talking about, I'm going to frame it as two different kinds of shame. I think the Stoics can say that there is shame sort of as a passion. And in that sense, shame is understood as a bad emotion in a sense that
00:03:24
Speaker
You're not seeing things clearly, this is the case. Part of the stoic view is just that sometimes people do experience shame inappropriately, and they experience it inappropriately because it's behind that emotion is an inaccurate judgment, especially about the worth of things or their own value. So that's sort of shame as a passion.
00:03:48
Speaker
But there's also I think this other aspect of stoicism where you see Epictetus, he's sort of like, you know, he's a motivational coach and in a real sense, he does shame his students. He has a hard time for the fact that their actions don't line up.
00:04:05
Speaker
with their ideals. And he does this repeatedly. I think you can also see when you read Marcus Aurelius's meditations that he also uses a kind of shame, a kind of self-judgment as a tool for making progress towards virtue. So that's these other aspects of shame. Maybe you could call it stoic shame or a kind of self-judgment that we'll talk about more, but
00:04:33
Speaker
Ultimately, I'm going to put these two on the table. I think having both of these conceptions of shame is useful, and perhaps the first will be clear enough if you've got some familiarity with stoicism.
Fear and Value Judgments
00:04:48
Speaker
I think it will be reasonably clear why the first kind of shame is bad. But there's actually some interesting aspects of both Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius around.
00:05:00
Speaker
self-image that I think is underrated. So I think we'll get to some possibly very impactful stuff later on. Yeah, exciting. Let's do it.
00:05:10
Speaker
Cool. So shame as a passion. The Stoics saw the experience of shame as the fear of disgrace. It's wanting to hide what you've done from yourself and others. And now the question is,
00:05:30
Speaker
Often, we are ashamed for the reasons that have to do with our own reputation. We have to do out of the fear of others' judgments. But this, of course, for the Stoics is an indifferent. It's not something that is ultimately valuable. Rather, it's how we use our reputation that matters.
00:05:52
Speaker
So you can think of someone who feels ashamed because they've done something that will be bad PR. It might hurt their bottom line or it might hurt their reputation in a way that cuts off any future opportunities. This kind of shame is the fear of disgrace almost for its own sake or for the sake of other indifference like wealth, status, pleasure.
00:06:19
Speaker
And that kind of shame, I think that the Stoics are clear, just is an indifference. So you have Marcus Aurelius likening fame and applause to merely the clapping of tongues. You know, he does his decomposition technique. He describes it in an objective way to sort of remove
00:06:45
Speaker
others praise, others criticism of its social power. So the first thing to say about shame is that it's especially shame as a passion. It's when one is sort of overtaken by this judgment, this that's grounded in a fear of disgrace, which ultimately is a matter of over valuing others opinions.
00:07:10
Speaker
And that's, I think, how the Stoics would see the negative form of shame. Cool. So throw that back at you. So shame is wanting to hide something that you've done. And if you want to hide something that you've done because you're attached to indifference or you're placing inappropriate in, you know, your body.
00:07:31
Speaker
So you can have shame, you can have kind of physical shame if I'm embarrassed about how I look. But that's because you're kind of coveting physical beauty, or you're identifying your value with physical beauty, right? So if you place value in the wrong kind of thing, then this experience of wanting to hide it or being embarrassed of it is a negative thing. And this is a kind of...
00:07:53
Speaker
That that's how what I was taken to be and that sounds like a very common stoic play. So for the stoics, there are kind of taxonomy of emotions is a view that emotions are going to have a value judgment of something being good or bad. And then a view that it's either present or forthcoming.
00:08:12
Speaker
And then what you place in these categories determines whether or not it's a passion, it's a negative, destructive emotion, or it's a you pathway. It's actually a kind of if I desire virtue,
00:08:27
Speaker
You know, I'm going to feel a kind of a happiness when I am virtuous. That's okay. If I desire money and I feel a kind of ecstatic happiness when I went at the slot machine, that's actually a passion. That's destructive and an inappropriate emotion. So it's a similar kind of play, which is they look, shame is one thing.
00:08:48
Speaker
But you've got to be very careful about the object of the shame. And if the object of the shame is something that you shouldn't actually want to hide, you shouldn't actually be embarrassed about, then it's, then it's inappropriate. You're making some sort of mistake. It's leading to this negative emotion. Is that, is that right?
00:09:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. Epictetus gives an example of a minstrel or a liar player who, he says, knows how to play the liar, sings well, and has a fine stage costume, a nice detail, but who still trembles with fear when he enters the theater. He knows these things, you see, but he doesn't understand crowds and doesn't know about their cheers and jeers. So I think he has this anxiety about how are others
00:09:33
Speaker
going to judge him. That's why if his performance meets with approval, he leaves the stage all puffed up with pride, whereas the prick of jeers deflates that bubble
Art, Self-Worth, and Internal Values
00:09:46
Speaker
of conceit. So on one hand, the minstrel is an expert of his craft. He does know how to play
00:09:54
Speaker
sing well, and yet he's not an expert, doesn't have the knowledge about what is valuable when it comes to being a good musician, which, of course, people's reaction to your performance is some amount of information about how good or bad it may have been, but it's not the sort of thing that
00:10:17
Speaker
should completely determine your view of how well you did or not the sort of thing that should cause one to overween with pride or as waterfield translates it, deflate that bubble of conceit.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah. I've always taken that Epictetus line to be about understanding the relationship between value judgments and emotion. And so like understanding, look, the reason you can play in your room with confidence, but you get really nervous on stage.
00:10:51
Speaker
Um, so the point here that you're making Caleb is that, you know, this is, we're taking that one step further, which is, you know, if you feel that kind of negative shame, embarrassment, that's because you're valuing. Again, it's because you're valuing something outside of yourself, your valid kind of thing. Um, instead of that, that thing that's, I guess, up to you, that, that kind of mastery of your craft or something along those lines.
00:11:13
Speaker
Right, right. And I think it's probably also useful to distinguish here from these initial impressions, these initial feelings and the overall judgment. So if you are met with, you know, those jeers, boos, what have you,
00:11:33
Speaker
Epictetus isn't saying it's a mistake to have those impressions, you know, those or even, you know, it's not a mistake to feel like that it appears to you that you've performed badly or something of that sort. What comes next is what matters. The musicians and judgments, do they at that point, you know, fully agree that
00:12:00
Speaker
they performed badly and perhaps, which you get into shame, feel like they've done something that results in disgrace, some amount of their self worth, maybe even be bound up with their performance. That's when you respond to those initial challenging impressions and accept them, take them on board.
Self-Image and Personal Growth
00:12:20
Speaker
That's when they become problematic.
00:12:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great point about how, look, we're not telling you to not get nervous before you perform on stage. Like that's going to happen. Uh, you know, you're going to feel that way, but it's then that, you know, do you allow that, if you get booed, do you, are you the kind of person who, you know, is waking up a day later, thinking about the time you got booed and.
00:12:43
Speaker
that kind of really shakes your confidence to the core. Just to use the language of the episode, does that make you feel ashamed of your performance? Just because somebody else thought negatively of it in the crowd, often even the minority. And maybe not, maybe you're really bad and it's the majority, but even then, right? There's still things to be proud of, the bravery of getting on stage, the courage it took to perform.
00:13:05
Speaker
Another way to flip this too is imagine if you were trying to get people to boo at you. So I don't know, imagine you came on stage and you did some sort of evocative art piece that you did understand the crowd and you did know the crowd was going to boo at you, or you did a counter, you were making some sort of political message or something.
00:13:23
Speaker
and you expected to be booed and you received booze, you would never feel shame in that kind of context because you'd think, well, you know, there's nothing wrong with me for getting the booze. The booze was what I was after on the jeers. It's that it's that thing of placing your value in the cheering that that makes you shamed when you get booed. Yeah, absolutely. Another part that I think is striking about the different passages from Marcus Aurelius or Epitetus here is that I think that
00:13:55
Speaker
main mistake of interpretation is just giving too much value to others' opinions and others' opinions about things that do not fundamentally matter. There's this nice fragment from Epictetus where he writes of two people who are talking to one another, bragging to one another.
00:14:19
Speaker
It's charming, he said, how some people preen themselves on qualities that aren't up to us. I'm better than you, says one, because I own many plots of land and you're starving. Another says, I'm of consular rank. Another, I'm a procurator. Another, I have gorgeous hair. But one horse doesn't say to another, I'm better than you because I've got a large field to graze in, plenty of barley, golden bridles, and embroidered caparisons.
00:14:45
Speaker
No, it says I'm faster than you. So that's that idea that the horse cares about speed. I think the reading here is, cause that's something that it's supposed to be good at from its nature. So likewise as a human being, you know, what you ought to be caring about is how rational are you? How pro social are you? Not all these other features around wealth, status, power, and so on.
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah, I love that quote. I'm also loving these references. I have gorgeous hair. This singer, this liar player had a nice stage costume. It's really very extra. It's very, very, very fancy. Discussers. There's another quote by Epictetus where he talks about
00:15:32
Speaker
somebody saying, you know, I'm better than you or like somebody being proud of their horse. And they're like, my horse is so amazing. I'm great. And it's like, no, your, your, your horse is great. Your horse is fast. It's like, why are you placing value on other things? So there's both that, that vice of placing value on these other things. And then Epictetus here in this quote, you just gave is providing an alternative. Well, don't be ashamed and prideful of the amount of plots of lands you have or your hair.
00:15:59
Speaker
Be proud of your virtues and your vices, the things that are part of your essential nature as a human being, not the superfluous circumstances. Right, right.
00:16:11
Speaker
All right, that's shame as a passion. Now I think we can move on to, okay, so you have a sense of what the vicious version of shame is. Shame as a bad emotional sort of thing you'd want to work on, but what's the positive version? So I think we've added one of our first episodes was on
00:16:35
Speaker
why you should care about what others think, in particular to be more precise. If other people have accurate judgments about a given matter, then that's the sort of thing you should care about. And I think you can apply that also to your own reasoning. If you're looking back and you think,
00:16:54
Speaker
Oh, this action I did was in fact a mistake. And it does seem like that's something you should care about. Now is the, what's the next, you know, the question I suppose is what's the next move? Should you experience that as shame? How would the Stoics talk about that?
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah. Interesting question. I mean, how can we, how can we harness? Is there a way that this looks like that it's healthy? And if so, what is that? And how can we harness it to our advantage? Yeah. Yeah. What is the, if, if, if, even if there's like fear and caution in is the eight or two emotions fears, the unhealthy one caution is the healthy one. What is kind of that healthy shame look like, I guess is the question. And is it, is it shame?
Shame and Character Improvement
00:17:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I suppose before we move on directly to that, it's interesting that Epictetus explicitly points out how humans are unique in virtue of our ability to experience shame. So from Discourses 3.7 he has this question, you know, and what are we by nature? We are free, honorable, and self-respecting.
00:18:10
Speaker
After all, does any other animal blush or feel shame? So here, shame is connected with self-respect, our image of ourselves, what we think our image of ourself requires of us.
00:18:29
Speaker
And I think that one of some additional moves here are that the beliefs we have about ourself, our self-image, if you will, is part of our motivational structure. I go to the... I'm taking a simple example would be someone who cares about
00:18:56
Speaker
cleanliness takes the time to clean up their room, maybe Jordan Peterson style, because they see themselves as someone who is clean. They have that self-definition, that self-image that is going to demand actions of them because if they saw that
00:19:17
Speaker
they lived in a pigsty, then they either need to deceive themselves and not believe what their eyes are telling them, or update their self-image. So I suppose if there's something central here, it's that our actions are in fact influenced by our self-image, which makes quite a lot of sense. Our actions in general are formed by our past judgments, and some of our past judgments make up our self-image.
00:19:45
Speaker
So reforming that self-image, maintaining it is a part of this project of shaping our character. Yeah, I like that idea that, you know, only the humans blush. And incorporating that as part of our essential nature. I don't know if it's part of our essential nature, but it's something, as you said, it's something kind of unique to us, absolutely.
00:20:11
Speaker
So I suppose the next move is, I think, to see the healthy version of shame as maintaining our self image. And I think we do that in two ways. So one is by noticing the disparity between our potential
00:20:37
Speaker
and reality. And we might feel shame when we realize our actions don't line up with our ideals or who we mean to be. And the second is spending time to actually cultivate that inner judge as it were that spending time to cultivate one's self image and an intentional
00:21:21
Speaker
The existentialist rebuttal would be something like, you're whatever kind of person you are. You don't have any sort of essential nature. You construct your nature by choosing to act. And we put ourselves in these boxes.
00:21:33
Speaker
way and seeing that as part of character improvement, really.
00:21:37
Speaker
to stop the existential dread of possibility. The fact that you could go and you could leave your family the next day. You could commit some sort of heinous crime. Nothing's stopping you from doing any of these things. So we kind of put our...
00:21:52
Speaker
And this is the view, but I guess in the positive sense, almost similar, which is like we put this box around ourself, this self image. I'm a good person. I'm not the kind of person who cheats, who lies, who steals. And then that self image is actually restricting our behavior in a positive way. And so we want to lean into that, especially if these are like positive images. I guess the idea is that you could have
00:22:20
Speaker
You could have that go the opposite way, where you could say, well, I'm a shameful person. I'm not the kind of person who tells the truth. I'm not the kind of person who's faithful. I'm not the kind of person who doesn't steal. Like you could have those, I guess you could have that self-conception work both positively and negatively. And I guess it's shame either way, but one kind of shame is constructive and one kind of shame is destructive.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. And we should touch more on that when we're thinking about challenges, but this issue of, if you're noticing that difference between your potential and reality, do you say, I ought to be better? Or do you respond in a more defeatist manner and just say, this is who I am, I am?
00:23:07
Speaker
Imperfect and I'm not going to get better, which is a mistake, but it's certainly certainly a trap. So maybe we'll come back to that.
Inner Judge and Self-Transformation
00:23:14
Speaker
But just to have the, I do want to.
00:23:17
Speaker
One way in which you do see this in the ancients, especially with Epictetus, is he's often accosting his students for being too interested in theory and not enough in practice. He makes fun of his students for being people who recite Chrysippus but don't show Chrysippus' teachings in their actions. Chrysippus was
00:23:46
Speaker
And the third head of the stoic, an ancient stoic. And he says, you know, if you're, you know, if when someone asks me to expound some passage of Chrysippus, I blush at my inability to show him that my actions reflect and are consistent with the words I'm reading. And I think he's especially poking his students saying, look, you guys are here in order to be
00:24:11
Speaker
excellent stoics, but from what I see, what's revealed in your actions, you're excellent perhaps at theory, but I need to see it in reality as well. I need to see it in your actions. If not, that shame should provide some impetus to be better, to become more like your positive potential.
00:24:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. I was thinking about how when we talk today, we talk about someone being shameless, and that's somebody, I guess, who has no kind of like dissonance between who they are and what they do. You know, they're like, I know who I am, this is how I act, and I'm not ashamed of it. And so this is almost saying we want to, there could be another kind of shamelessness.
00:24:57
Speaker
that comes from really ignorance or lack of self reflection, which is this idea of like, I claim to be a philosopher, but I don't actually do the things a philosopher do does I claim to be, you know, a good person.
00:25:12
Speaker
I claim to have all these kinds of things would be courageous, but I don't do courageous things. And that, that lack of self-reflection would be the vice, you know, that kind of hypocritical, um, or at least like really not self-aware. And so you want to, you want to cultivate in those people, you want those people to cultivate an actual kind of, a kind of a shame. So go from being shameless in, in that dissonance to shameful and be a little bit embarrassed.
00:25:37
Speaker
and recognize that the way that they're acting is not matching up with who they say they are or who they think they are, which I think is actually a really good quality. Something I work on is breaking down that, you put it as disparity between potential and reality, but breaking down even that disparity between self-conception and reality and trying to get those closer and trying to admit when I fail to do that.
00:26:02
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, I think this point of self-conception is key, and it's related to the idea of cultivating this inner judge, or another phrase from Epictetus is cultivating the God within. There's a philosopher, Kamtikar, Rachana Kamtikar, who has a nice paper on this, and I hadn't actually thought of connecting self-image with this specific phrase of Epictetus before.
00:26:32
Speaker
But she knows he's often, this is one of his phrases, and one way to interpret it is to think about how you are managing your self-image, how you are living up to it, and indeed connecting that idea with Epictetus' ideal of freedom. So let me, before I say anything else about that,
00:26:57
Speaker
One passage where he discusses this is Discourses 1.14. Nevertheless, he has also furnished every individual with a custodian in the form of an individual guardian spirit.
00:27:12
Speaker
and has entrusted him to the protection of this unsleeping and undecievable being? Is there any better or more caring guardian to which he could have entrusted each of us? And so, when you people close your doors and make it dark inside, remember never to think that you're by yourselves, because you aren't. God is there with you, and so is your guardian spirit. And what need do they have of light to see what you're doing?
00:27:42
Speaker
So you can have a metaphysical reading of this, certainly, or you could think of your guardian spirit as that self-image, right? That idea of who you are and the fact that you're something you're always going to be constructing through each decision, each choice.
00:28:11
Speaker
whether or not others are observing you. So if you think about shame as a passion, a crucial mistake of someone who experiences shame when they shouldn't, is placing their well-being in the hands of other people's conception about themselves and other people's opinions about themselves.
00:28:41
Speaker
And one way to interpret this move that Patitis is asking his students to do is think about your self-image as this sort of individual spirit. And that self-image is what you should ask for approval from.
00:28:59
Speaker
That's the potential that you're aiming to live up to. That's that best version of yourself that should be setting the standards for your behavior, which of course is another way of saying this.
00:29:15
Speaker
you alone are responsible for approving your actions or not.
Example of Euphrates and Authentic Action
00:29:23
Speaker
And in that way, I think you become free, right? You're not contingent. Your well-being isn't contingent on other people's opinions. Instead, it's up to you, up to your own self-image and whether or not your decisions live up to that image of yourself.
00:29:45
Speaker
I love that. I think that's really, really beautiful. And that's something that I think about very much with stoicism. You think about the appeal to nature, but not this appeal to, I don't know, this guardian inside of you or this self image, this reflection.
00:30:05
Speaker
And also, I was thinking about this idea of conscience. Maybe this is like a precursor to a conscience. And I was thinking about the etymology to conscience, which is science, calling science, it's like to know together.
00:30:21
Speaker
And it's the same kind of idea of consciousness. It's the same etymology of that, which is like self-knowledge. I'm reaching a bit here with these etymologies, but I think they're all interrelated, right? It's like this reflexivity, this capacity to think about yourself and what you've done actively. And that's consciousness.
00:30:39
Speaker
But that's also your conscience. That's also your moral guide, as well as actual reflection. And so this idea of leaning on that here that Epictetus is emphasizing, and what need do they have of light to see what you're doing? This idea, you know, kind of Santa Claus, right? Like, they see what you're doing, no matter what.
00:30:58
Speaker
I think that's a cool way to focus our moral energy just inward. Again, this idea that you already have the tools to navigate the situation well, as long as you're really sensitive to this God inside you, basically.
00:31:12
Speaker
This is the version of the stoic conscience, if you will. And I think one way in which it might be different than other versions of the conscience is that it's not merely a list of rules or things one ought to be upholding.
00:31:34
Speaker
But there's a focus not purely on acts but who you are and whether you're living up to that ideal, which comes, of course, because it's a virtue ethic. It's focused on being an excellent person, not, say, purely following rules or something of that sort.
00:31:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's not. And that's the other thing is that it's not just like, uh, often we frame conscience as the pang of guilt. And maybe that's something here too about it being shame, right? It's like the pang of shame, but there's also something aspirational to this too. Right. Not just, Oh, I feel guilty after the fact. I feel like the conscience is also framed almost non-reflective subconscious. Uh, it's the, it's the feeling you get when you've done something wrong.
00:32:21
Speaker
not the thought, not the knowledge. And this is almost turning it into a bit more reflective and then a bit more aspirational, too. Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. Epictetus gives the example of another philosopher, Euphrates, who hid the fact that he was a philosopher from others. Euphrates says, for a long time, I tried to hide the fact that I was practicing philosophy and I found it useful to do so.
00:32:51
Speaker
In the first place, it enabled me to know that if I did something well, I was doing it not on account of any people who might be looking on, but on my own accounts.
Stoic Reflection on Shame
00:33:02
Speaker
It was for my own sake that I ate properly and made sure that my expression and gait were calm and collected. Everything was for myself and God.
00:33:13
Speaker
And I like that example just because especially that ending highlights, I'm doing these for their own sake for my cell, not in the sense that it's purely egoistic action, but because it's a matter of, one could say, cell transformation or becoming a specific kind of person for its own sake, not out of what others would say about it.
00:33:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think we talk so much about contemplation of this age. We put so much emphasis on this idea of like, yeah, it matters what people think of you, just focus on good people, which I think is still right. But I like this idea of, well, it matters what you think of you. That's a person. And so everything for myself, and even pulling this out of the abstract a bit, I mean, that's a test we still use today, right? Like, if you post it on social media,
00:34:12
Speaker
Those things where people go around and they donate money, but they film themselves doing it. It's always a bit confusing about, well, what's the real reason? But if you're doing it in a way that nobody knows, you're clearly doing it for yourself. It's not that you can't be doing it for the right reason and doing it publicly, it's just you're definitely doing it for the right reason if you're not doing it publicly.
00:34:38
Speaker
Yeah, you're more likely to be doing it for the right reason, that seems right. So that's anything else you want to say in terms of the stoic view of shame?
00:34:51
Speaker
Well, let me just try to, let me, let me try to, uh, I feel like we covered a lot there. So let me try to summarize and you can correct me when I get this. So shame is this, um, grace, a kind of, uh, uh, wanting to hide what you've done from yourself, a kind of a emotional negative feeling for having done something wrong or done something disgraceful.
00:35:10
Speaker
Like any other stoic emotion, it matters what you focus it on. So if you feel shamed for something that's outside of you, you're probably getting this wrong. You shouldn't be ashamed at the way that you look. You shouldn't be ashamed at your social status or what somebody said of you. Now you're placing value in the wrong kinds of things. That being said, the stoics teach that we should care about our character.
00:35:37
Speaker
And so we can use shame as a motivating force if we direct it towards the right object, which is to say, if we feel a bit of a pang of guilt or a blush when we fail to live up to our potential or when we fail to act in the kind of way that we conceive of ourselves as. And the way to the actual exercise for that is to cultivate your inner judge
00:36:05
Speaker
which is that kind of reflexive sense of yourself that evaluates or asks proactively, did I live up to my potential?
Challenges of Standards and Beliefs
00:36:16
Speaker
Did I act in the way I was claiming to? I said I was a philosopher. I said I was a good friend. I said I was a good partner. Did I do that? Did I live up to that potential and that self-image? And then if I didn't, well, then I'm going to feel a little bit ashamed of that, and that's going to motivate me to improve.
00:36:33
Speaker
But it's got to be, it's a kind of a self-reflective action and it's got to be for the right reasons. We didn't touch on it here, but it's also got to be for in the right amount. Anything that becomes kind of defeatist or kind of like, well, I lied here. So I guess I'm just a no good liar forever is, uh, that's, that's taking things too far.
00:36:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think that I agree with that. I think my view would be that there are two different kinds of emotions, perhaps, or these are two different kinds of phenomena. One is a shame as a passion. And then there's also the
00:37:14
Speaker
emotion one has when you notice you're not living up to that inner judge or you're not living up to your potential, your aspirations in a healthy way. And I would consider those two different emotional states, even though they're responses to very similar feelings, very similar sensations or impressions, if not the same impressions.
00:37:44
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure the Stoics, I don't have the Greek in front of me right now, but I'm sure the Stoics would use different words for them. They do that all the time, right? Like that example I gave of fear and caution. Caution is when you avoid something for the right reasons in the right way and it's a healthy emotion and fear is the unhealthy passion. And so we don't say passionate fear and healthy fear. There's always like a kind of a distinction the Stoics make. I don't know what division you would make here, which is kind of like,
00:38:10
Speaker
shame and then maybe like self-respect is the healthy one, but you'd have some sort of different framing there. Yeah, I think self-respect is a fine way to put it. I think especially given Epictetus's focus on self-respect. Awesome. I think we can wrap up just with a few challenges that people might have when they're thinking about
00:38:34
Speaker
Okay, we've got shame as a passion, the stoic version of shame, thinking about self-respect. How do we do that? How do we experience that well? How do we avoid potential obstacles? So going through some challenges I think would be useful.
00:38:53
Speaker
And one is that we can experience shame inappropriately when we're responding to the wrong standards, as it were. And I think there's two ways this can happen. One is when we have
00:39:10
Speaker
inaccurate beliefs about what is good. Another happens when you have inaccurate beliefs about what is possible. So in a way, shame as passion just is that first one most often, you have inaccurate beliefs about the value of other's opinions, the value of disgrace, what have you.
00:39:34
Speaker
And then the second one, I think is more of a challenge when it comes to cultivating that inner judge, which is that you always need that combination of
00:39:47
Speaker
being ambitious, but also being realistic.
Shame for Past Actions
00:39:50
Speaker
I think if you try to go from zero to one in a given habit, you know, never run before, I think I'm going to run an ultra marathon in the next three weeks and that's going to require running every day, starting at 10 miles a day or something like that, that's obviously going to not be feasible for
00:40:12
Speaker
most people, and I think it's a balancing act to ensure that your self-image is something that you can attain, that you can begin to approach. So possibility needs to combine that striving for being an excellent person with being realistic.
00:40:42
Speaker
Yeah, and possibility. I think that's a really smart distinction killed and possibly hits on a type of shame that I don't think we've talked about, which is.
00:40:52
Speaker
Interestingly, not the type of shame Epictetus brings up, but it's very common, which I think is this kind of shame for the past or shames for shames, shame about things that have been done. And I think that violates the kind of type of possibility, right? Which is that you couldn't do differently. So, you know, you can't, you shouldn't be ashamed currently, first of all.
00:41:14
Speaker
Um, because you can't do differently. I'm talking about somebody who's apologized, who's like, even if you, they deserved, they deserve to feel shame in the moment has, you know, come to terms with that, apologize, taking the steps they should. You feel, maybe you feel shame in the moment for not apologizing, taking the steps to reconcile or doing what you need to do.
00:41:37
Speaker
But you shouldn't feel shame in the past because there's not really a possibility of changing that or fixing that. The other type of thing is the kind of self forgiveness that comes with understanding possibility. So, you know, if you.
00:41:50
Speaker
I don't know if your parents are divorced and you blame yourself because of what you did when you were 10, it's like, well, it's not really possible for a child to understand that or navigate that situation well. It's not really possible for a child to have that kind of foresight or it's not really possible for people. People feel guilt.
00:42:11
Speaker
and shame about all kinds of situations that they didn't control or didn't really cause. And so that, again, appeals to that possibility. You don't necessarily want to say, oh, wow, that situation didn't matter. It wasn't an important situation, but you can appeal to that idea of, well, was there a possibility for you to done differently? Was there a standard that you should have held yourself to? And a lot of the time, I think the answer is no. Um, and we're just.
00:42:36
Speaker
doing some pop psychology here, I think people transfer the negative emotion of the situation onto themselves. Yeah. Because I think they want to retain some control or some sort of, but really it's no, that's going back to you didn't have, there wasn't any possibility. And so you, you couldn't have changed it.
Healthy Shame as a Guide
00:42:50
Speaker
So you shouldn't feel guilty. Yeah. I think that, that is a kind of shame we haven't talked about.
00:42:58
Speaker
as much where we define shame is wanting to hide what you have done from yourself and others. But it is true that some people will feel shame merely for being in a particular circumstance, not even a kind of action or for something that was done to them instead of something they explicitly did. And that is somewhere where I think you do want to keep in
00:43:26
Speaker
I think to some extent we haven't fully addressed that experience here. There's more to say about it, but at least one thing to say about it is it is misplaced because it likely wasn't possible for you to avoid that. One, it couldn't have been expected to avoid whatever experience that was very often.
00:43:51
Speaker
One other maybe one other line that might be useful here is I so I do think it in the stoic sense It does make sense to feel shame for things that happened say a decade ago or something of this sort if that is Serving as a guide and not a critic. So I
00:44:11
Speaker
if remembering that act is something that actually plays a role in motivating you to do better than having that in the back of your mind as a matter of self-respect can be useful.
00:44:30
Speaker
It fails if that memory is purely serving as a critic, something about you're this kind of person because you did that. That's the sort of thing that isn't updating your character in any positive way.
00:44:52
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that. And that's where the English language, we're starting to struggle a bit with the English language here. You know, shame is this kind of internal critic guilt. Uh, that for something 10 years ago, especially something that you've acted, that you've made up for, if you, if you should have made up for it. I'm not sure if I feel, I think that's usually, if not always unhealthy, but as you said, you can get pushed forward. Well, I'm not going to go back there. I'm not going to be like that again.
00:45:18
Speaker
I'm going to hold myself to a higher standard now that can have a motivating force for good.
Potential for Self-Transformation and Growth
00:45:23
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Do you want to touch on any other challenges?
00:45:29
Speaker
I mean, one thing that we haven't talked about is this distinction. Martha Nussbaum makes this distinction between shame and guilt, and Nussbaum, who's amazing,
00:45:51
Speaker
political philosopher contemporary political philosopher but also ancient Greek philosopher as well says the distinction here is that guilt is you feel guilty about things that you've done and you feel shame for what you are so shame is about placing that essential onus on the self and guilt is acts
00:46:13
Speaker
And the difference there is that guilt is a better emotion or at least the easier emotion because you can atone for things you've done, but you can't change who you are, at least in some people's conception. And I would say that's a very significant stoic difference is that even when we're talking about shame, the stoics might say, well, shame is about who you are, but you can change who you are.
00:46:35
Speaker
So shame is about your character, not just about the results, not about the external circumstances. It's not about making a mistake. It's about your character, but that stricting defeatist part of shame, which is that, well, this is who I essentially am. This is who I necessarily am. The Stoics don't endorse. They allow that freedom for self-transformation.
00:47:01
Speaker
That's what puts it, I think if you had shame in that other category, it would be always bad out. I'm always going to ignore it. I'm always going to avoid it. And that's what I think puts this positive shame on the table. And that's what makes it motivating or motivating self-respect where we want to call it is because it is deeply entrenched in this growth mindset. Yeah, I feel bad about being person A because we believe you can be person B. We know you can be person B.
00:47:27
Speaker
um whereas you know feel bad about being person a and you're going to be person a for the rest of your life doesn't feel quite as inspiring right right yeah i think it is about who you are about the fact that you're not currently living up to your individual guardian spirit or your self-conception your potential and your emotions would always be serving the purpose of motivating virtue here and seeing
00:47:52
Speaker
reality as it is. And for the Stoics, you can change who you are. You can make those both realistic and ambitious incremental improvements. You can always progress. And you can progress towards being someone with excellent character. So just thinking about yourself just as this person essentially is going to be a mistake.
Conclusion and Resources
00:48:21
Speaker
Okay. I'm feeling surprisingly pumped up and motivated after this discussion of shame. That is the first time in my life, had a good chat about shame and I'm like, I'm feeling good actually. All right. That's great. All right. Thanks for listening. Cool. Thanks everyone.
00:48:38
Speaker
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00:49:08
Speaker
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00:49:30
Speaker
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